Damn, the killer updates to the Robotic Empire – Online Store just keep on comin! This week we’ve got the recent re-press of YOUNG WIDOWS live LP, on 180 GRAM maroon colored vinyl. 500 more of these jammers got pressed up in the 2nd (final?) pressing of this killer window into an awesome live band prime in their element: LIVE! Between spreading around copies to the band and our distributor, we got less than 200 copies of this and its available from us now.

In addition to that, we’ve gotten in some new & exclusive t-shirt designs direct from the bands TORCHE and TIDELAND. Touring with COHEED AND CAMBRIA, TORCHE recently passed through Seattle and handed off some excess records and shirts to us since their old van died and the new one is smaller. With so much gear, no more trailer and 1 more guitar player meant passing off some extra merch to us. Unfortunately, since then TORCHE was ruthlessly robbed in Chicago with several guitars, amps, passports, laptops and other personal stuff stolen. In other words: a MAJOR bummer on a tour that’s already kinda hand-to-mouth since they just borrowed money for a new van. They’ve booked some last-minute shows on the east coast since they can’t get into Canada without their passports… so go see them & buy em a drink or something if ya can! They’re pretty gutted after having custom gear and irreplaceable stuff ripped off by jerks, so if you can help them out in any way, they would hugely appreciate it!

In better news though, TIDELAND printed up some wacky shirts recently to have for upcoming touring in support of their debut Asleep In The Graveyard album we dropped a few weeks back. If you haven’t checked out TIDELAND yet, we highly recommend them. A killer (and catchy) combination of shoegazer, grunge and punk rock to create some kind of all-new megabeast. Three album tracks (including one new one) have been posted here and several others can be streamed here. TIDELAND merch & records are available from us here and TORCHE merch & records are available from us here.

In addition to the above shirts, we also worked out something with MAN IS THE BASTARD too so the classic skull logo shirts of theirs we carry are about as “officially licensed” as they’re gonna get! Stoked on that! Re-upped ’em in both black & white, so check those out. Also scored a pile of killer new vinyl releases, including several BARONESS 12″s (which we can never keep in stock for long), spacey EARTHLESS jawns, GODFLESH galore, GROWING, the long awaited LA QUIETE / PHOENIX BODIES 5″ import, some sweet VALKYRIE CD reissues and way more. Here ya go:

Thanks everyone as always! Also a quick note to say we are still slightly backed up with orders at the moment so please allow some extra time for your orders to arrive. We appreciate your patience as we scramble to keep up with the recent order volume! Again, please help out TORCHE if ya can! Thanks & peace!

After a long lull in Robotic Empire new-release label activity, its nice to finally be back in the throws of a hectic release schedule. Maybe almost TOO hectic, as hot on the heels of vinyl from FLOOR, YOUNG WIDOWS and CAPSULE, we’ve got yet another LP for ya!

This time around we’re stoked to announce the debut album from Sterling, Virginia’s TIDELAND. From the same cauldron of suburban wretchedness that birthed PG.99, SAIL and PIZZA, 3 members of these bands have now converged as TIDELAND with the stellar debut, Asleep In The Graveyard. 11 songs that fall between grunge, shoegazer and punk rock… TIDELAND mesh a smattering of unlikely elements to create some caustic yet downright infectious jams. Catchy yet dirty, Asleep In The Graveyard walks a tightrope between digestible and destructive. Over 35 minutes of horrific visions and druggy nightmares on this impressive debut LP.

Kurt Ballou recorded this beast at Godcity, so you know it sounds damn good. Two of our favorite tracks have been posted here and some more cuts (new & old) can be heard here.

This album is a co-release with Sons of Vesta outta Italy, so if you’re in Europe please order it from them. 1000 copies were pressed: 600 on black, 200 on cream and 200 on a matching opaque blue. This release has been a really long time coming (recorded nearly 2 years ago!), but in the end it turned out awesome and we’ve seriously jammed the hell out of this one. So stoked this is finally out, please check it out in the Robotic Empire – Online Store now!

In geographically related news, we’ve posted 4 unreleased PYGMY LUSH songs that were recorded live in Richmond back in October. These jams are a bit raw/rough around the edges but should give ya a little something to salivate over while these guys revamp things a bit, and continue to take their sweet time getting back into a studio. It’ll be worth the wait for sure, but in the meantime these have been essential songs for us during a big time of transition, and it only felt appropriate to share. You can check those out now at the Robotic Obscurities blog.

Beyond all the Northern Virginia music above, we’ve also got a generally MASSIVE update for the Robotic Empire – Online Store this week. Having skipped last week’s update so we could catch up on orders a bit, we’re ready to dive back into the mailorder chaos so please keep em comin!

A whole bunch of new shirts have come in, including all the unsold FLOOR reunion show t-shirts. Some killer designs spanning the ages, and almost all on American Apparel (so they’re cozy as hell)… check those out as its unclear if we’ll ever be restocking them or not. Also a tour design from EYEHATEGOD, some re-ups from Eat Death, and a couple tiny Youth Medium sized THOU t-shirts… for your kid brother or tiny girlfriend or whatever. Add in a slew of new import and domestic vinyl releases (CIRCLE, GIANTS, JUNIUS, MOSS, ROSETTA, SHITSTORM, etc)… plus some more killer restocks across the board, and we’ve got a pretty rad update for ya this week. Real stoked on this one, here’s the full list:

Hello again, it’s been a while. A lot has happened at Robotic Empire over the past month or so… in fact, the label/mailorder is now split into two camps on opposite ends of the country. This massive move was a huge undertaking for us, but better for everyone in the end as it will mean a more organized setup for our Online Store operation (now located in Olympia, Washington), and some much needed change for the Virginia setup.

We want to thank everyone who ordered from us in any of our our pre-move sales, and also thank those who have been patient while we’ve gotten everything for the Online Store re-established out in Olympia. Things are fully operational again, and better than ever! So we are very pleased to present you a somewhat meaty update here, with lots of happenings both for the label and Online Store aspects of Robotic Empire…

First up, we’re releasing some new records in June. It’s been a slow first part of the year for the label (intentionally) but we’ve got a lot going on in the second half of the year. Kicking things off on June 9th will be the debut releases from New Zealand’s DIAL and Louisville, Kentucky’s BAD SECRETS.

DIAL is the first band from the southern hemisphere that we’ve ever worked with, and couldn’t be much happier about this pairing. Hailing from Wellington, New Zealand… DIAL self-released a demo a couple of years ago that we recently got to hear on a trip to NZ last fall. Intensely powerful stuff is contained within this little five-song EP, so much that we asked the band if we could re-release and thankfully they agreed.

To quote our official hype sheet for this: “The material contained within is leaps and bounds beyond what most bands accomplish even at their best. DIAL successfully channels the darkest corners of the AmRep catalog, the raw ferocity of classic hardcore, offtime kilter of math-rock, and the whole concept that music can actually be dangerous. The air-tight composure of DIAL‘s debut recording is striking; focusing more on space and dissonance than technical shreddery. Obscenely heavy guitars collide with bludgeoning percussion and intense, vicious and scathing female vocals… turning the whole thing into a downright terrifying experience. Add an incredibly crisp recording, and this makes DIAL‘s debut EP one of the most impressive demos we’ve heard in years, let alone had the privilege to re-release.”

We are really stoked about this release and it’ll be available on CD and digitally come June 9th. To give you a little preview, we just posted a track from it on our myspace page:

Louisville, Kentucky’s BAD SECRETS was born out of improv jam sessions between YOUNG WIDOWS‘ Evan Patterson and KODAN ARMADA‘s Dan Davis. They recorded three weekends of jamming together, whittled it down to seven songs and thus, their debut release is born. We went for the super conventional 9″+CD format for this one, since it’s such a normal release and all. Hah!

In all seriousness though, we’re really psyched to finally work with Mr. Patterson after knowing this righteous dude and his kin for years. Who knows, maybe we’ve got another release with him up our sleeves…

Until then, the self-titled debut 9″+CD from BAD SECRETS should hit the world on June 9th (if we can get the band to screen the covers in time) and we’re very pumped on the ridiculous color vinyl we’ve got in store for it too. More info on this release forthcoming.

This is probably also a good time to announce that we’ll be releasing the debut album from northern Virginia’s TIDELAND! Mostly comprised of dudes we’ve known for years, upon hearing their killer full length that they recorded @ Godcity studios… deciding to release this was kind of a no-brainer. We’ll be teaming up with our Italian brethren Sons Of Vesta to co-release this on both CD and 12″, sometime later in the summer (most likely July or August).

We’ll post up a track from this release sometime soon, but in the meantime several demos can be found on the band’s myspace page. We should note: the album blows away everything they’ve recorded before.

Semi-related, TIDELAND will be playing the two upcoming MANNEQUIN reunion shows. Yep, our ol’ brothers in grunge finally decided it was time to return to form! There’s surely several reasons for this happening, one favorite being that Ian Widman wanted to drum for MANNEQUIN as his graduation present. We gotta give a hearty “congrats” to him for making this happen! If you live in Virginia (or anywhere relatively close) and want to check out these killer shows, they’ll both be happening the weekend of May 9th/10th and the details for the shows can be found on TIDELAND‘s myspace page.

* An unmastered tour-only MANNEQUIN EP that had two released & two unreleased songs on it (and their name spelled wrong on the cover) can be found here: download “Yr Aching Tooth!!!”

Semi-related to that is that we’ve now got new t-shirts in our Online Store from both PYGMY LUSH and PG.99. Resurrecting the old “goth girl” design sourced from the PAGENINETYNINE / CITY OF CATERPILLAR split 7″, we’re psyched to have this one back in print. Along with that are two new designs from PYGMY LUSH, designed for their last tour. Totally classic, and available now in our Online Store.

Completely unrelated to everything above but equally exciting to us is the re-press of the A STORM OF LIGHT / NADJA – Primitive North 2×12″+CD split. The first press for this thing was a total blowout, so we’ve re-pressed it with the quickness in attempts to keep it available. Two new color vinyl combinations are available for this beast of a release, this time as “Aurora Forge” and “Phosphorescence”. Maybe corny names (?) but it compliments the weird colored vinyl well, and we’re equally pleased with how the re-press turned out as we are with the first press. This comes with a CD of the same jams, and is housed in some pretty fancypants packaging.

Related to that is the fact that we got some super rare CDs direct from Josh Graham of A STORM OF LIGHT and formerly of RED SPAROWES. This includes the self-released very first RED SPAROWES demo CD-R, and their limited live CD that Neurot released. Along with those (which WILL go fast) is the hard-to-find (FALLEN) BLACK DEER Latitudes CD release that Southern organized a couple years back. Hardly any distros got that thing and we scored some copies direct from the band.

Along with all that crazyness above, we’ve also received a healthy amount of new and re-stocked items for this massive first Online Store update from our bi-coastal locations! GO!

Phew! Wow OK so that’s enough to keep us busy for a while right? There’s plenty more on deck so this year’s just gonna get crazier and crazier for us. We like it this way, so please get those orders in and we’ll crank them out as quickly as possible. THANK YOU!